New York's Elektra Records pivots to Los Angeles to sign psychedelic band Love
In late 1965, New York label head Jac Holzman travelled to Los Angeles to sign the underground band Love, a move that commercialised the city's psychedelic revolution and accelerated the transatlantic export of West Coast rock.
In late 1965, Jac Holzman, president of New York’s Elektra Records, travelled to the West Coast to scout new talent. Tiring of the folk scene in his home city, Holzman attended a show by the Los Angeles band Love at Bido Lito’s Club and immediately moved to sign them.
This acquisition marked a significant strategic pivot for Elektra, which had recently missed out on signing the Lovin’ Spoonful. By securing Love directly with frontman Arthur Lee, who lacked management or a booking agent, Holzman bypassed industry middlemen to capture the emerging psychedelic market.
Love was central to a musical shift in 1960s California that redefined the commercial music landscape. While peers like The Byrds were already achieving commercial success and undertaking European tours, Love represented the raw, underground edge of the West Coast sound that Elektra aimed to monetise.
Elektra quickly rushed the band into Sunset Sound Studio to record their debut album. Holzman produced the record alongside Mark Abramson and 21-year-old engineer Bruce Botnick, capturing a live set that included the Bryan MacLean-penned track Softly To Me.
Lee’s background was as complex as the music he produced for the label. Born in Memphis to a white jazz musician father and a mother with African-American and Native-American roots, he moved to Los Angeles as a child and cultivated a fiercely independent persona.
The group had evolved through several iterations, starting as the American Four and later the Grass Roots, before settling on the name Love in August 1965. They built their local following by playing seedy backrooms and gay bars, gradually replacing existing clientele with a dedicated, straight crowd.
The recording sessions were intense, with engineer Botnick noting that Lee was "stoned twenty-four hours a day." Nevertheless, the resulting debut album laid the groundwork for the band's later 1967 release, Forever Changes, and cemented Elektra’s footprint in the lucrative Los Angeles rock market.
